Many of the Fast & Furious movies are showing up on Canadian Netflix. All the way up to Fast Five, I think. For the record, I still haven’t seen the eighth one, but I have read The Ringer staff’s exit survey about it. After re-watching the first few films (in the background, and I honestly couldn’t make it through the second one or the one about “drifting”) something occurred to me: in the very first movie these guys can barely jump on to a moving big rig truck that basically looks to be going the speed limit, but seven movies later they are a crack team of international heister-problem-solvers-Bond/Bourne-esque superheroes who parachute a fleet of vehicles on to a narrow mountain road while the Rock fights a submarine. To say the least, Dom’s family – family – has learned a lot since boosting cars and street racing for ownership papers in East LA. Here are eight Fast & Furious ways to enhance learning agility.
NOTE: if you only read one thing about the cultural significance of these movies read how my hero Shea Serrano ranked them.
Also, just so we’re clear, here is a short definition of learning agility from Forbes’s Kevin Cashman:
Learning Agility is a key to unlocking our adaptation proficiency. It is “knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do.” … Learning Agility is a complex set of skills that allows us to learn something in one situation and apply it in a completely different situation. It is about gathering patterns from one context and then using those patterns in a completely new context.
In short, Learning Agility is the ability to learn, adapt, and apply ourselves in constantly morphing conditions, such as increasingly complex heist/revenge/crime-fighting scenarios.
Have a growth mindset
“Individuals who believe their talents can be developed (through hard work, good strategies, and input from others) have a growth mindset,” says HBR’s Carol Dweck. “They tend to achieve more than those with a more fixed mindset (those who believe their talents are innate gifts). This is because they worry less about looking smart and they put more energy into learning.” This is where it all starts for Dom, Brian and the crew – from Gisele to Roman to Letty everyone believes that they are full of potential. How else could Tej evolve from a street-race-overseeing, hot-shot-mechanic to one of the best three hackers on Earth in approximately four films and, like, 28 months of movie time?
Try new things
When you’re like Dominic Toretto and you live your life a quarter mile at a time then you are probably looking for new and exciting things to test and learn from at least three times per mile. Or maybe you approach your career through the lens of positive uncertainty and develop enthusiastic engagement for the unknown next phase of the journey waiting for you at, like, mile two, I guess? Here is a list of new things Dom tries* during the Fast & Furious franchise:
- Trusting a new friend
- Attaching a safe to two cars and careening through downtown Rio de Janeiro
- Wearing various types of tight, white shirts
- Skydiving with cars!
- Delegation
- Forging alliances with once-enemies
- Driving backwards down a mountain
- Letting go of a lifelong friendship in service of family wellbeing
When we try new things our brain is energized with creativity and our body snaps out of complacency. For you, this might just mean taking a different route home from work (without a bank vault attached to the back of your Corolla).
*NOTE: he does not try a beverage other than Corona.
Be a sponge
Brian O’Connor is referred to as a sponge in the first movie (this is probably true). People with high learning agility soak up information and ideas from everywhere all the time. Brian learns not to fire up his NOS too soon. Dom learns about electric fuel injection. Gisele teaches everyone about weapons and hand to hand combat as well as men’s weaknesses. Letty regains her memory by spending a lot of time with Dom and the crew in familiar places. Wherever you find yourself today, deeply listen to what you hear and soak up everything that you can.
Build a learning community
This is an excerpt from Serrano and Andrew Gruttadaro’s article that details the criteria for how the films are ranked. It focuses on “how thoroughly was the idea of “family” tested in the movie.
The concept of family is what defines the Fast movies. You can tell because Dom says “family” almost as much as Groot says “Groot” in Guardians of the Galaxy. A sign of a superior Fast movie is how well it explores this idea of basic sociological affiliation, delving into its construction and stretching the bond to its breaking point.
Learning through communities enhance engagement and retention of information. Whether to take a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) or engage in a peer-mentoring group, surrounding yourself with people who are interested in the same stuff will help you finish the experience and inspire you to apply the learnings, too.
Make things uncomfortable
Learning new ideas by reading books or blogs like this one is a good start. Experiencing ideas and testing your knowledge of, say, gravity by driving a Ferrari through multiple skyscrapers is a totally different story. “I thrive when the pressure is on – it makes me feel alive and determined, and it pushes me forward,” says Virgin Founder, Sir Richard Branson. “In order to progress and change for the better we need to continuously put ourselves outside of our comfort zones.” From breaking into a police station to persisting with affection for an amnesia-riddled-lover to skydiving out of an airplane, the franchise’s crew is always a little out of their comfort zone. For Brian at the end of the seventh film, choosing his family and a mini van over a fast-paced life of car chases and international intrigue is perhaps the most uncomfortable thing any of the characters do in the franchise.
Get a nemesis
Agent Hobbs (The Rock) joins the franchise in Fast Five and he inspires Dom to push himself. According to Jesus Jimenez, having a rival, in fact, can be an incredible professional advantage for your growth:
At the end of the day, rivals respect each other. Few people understand how challenging it is to become a top tennis player, but Nadal and Federer do. Few people know what it’s like to establish a tech powerhouse, something Jobs and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates did. Despite their longtime rivalry, Gates wrote a letter to Jobs—terminally ill at the time—saying that he should take pride in his and Apple’s success. Jobs reportedly kept the letter at his bedside.
Rivals admire each other. As an undercover cop, Brian was chasing down Dom from inside his crew and then semi-teamed-up in Fast & Furious to avenge Letty’s death/non-death and take down a ruthless drug dealer because, I dunno, it’s the right thing to do I guess. Hobbs and Dom start their relationship in a classic murderous-cat-and-murderous-mouse game in the favelas of Rio. When we get to The Fate of the Furious Hobbs is aligning with another rival, Deckard Shaw, to bring back his former rival, Dom. Having a nemesis pushes us to be better (even if we hate them).
Take risks
“Learning-agile people are pioneers – they venture into unknown territory and put themselves ‘out there’ to try new things,” says HBR’s J.P. Flaum and Becky Winkler. “They take ‘progressive risk’ – not thrill-seeking, but risk that leads to opportunity… They volunteer for jobs and roles where success is not guaranteed, where failure is a possibility.” Okay, so thrill-seeking must factor into the kind of risks that Dom, Brian, Letty, Hobbs, and the whole crew take throughout the franchise. More than anything else, the learnings from such experiences enhance the personal and collective potential. And here are some of my favourite risks from the franchise:
- Any bad guys fighting The Rock
- Trusting someone so deeply that it could break you apart
- I think seatbelts are only worn, like, 85% of the time, which is not enough of the time
- Overly complex schemes, like subterranean drug-running tunnels
- Los Angeles traffic
- Devastating a hospital that’s responsible for the care of your brother and then threatening the hospital staff with harm should anything happen to your brother
- Messing with family
Always be innovating
Fast Company’s Sean Kim has some create ideas for breaking down personal growth and innovation into daily micro-activities. He highlights the value of focusing your energy on the 20% of abilities and efforts that will achieve 80% of your desired outcome:
If you’re learning guitar, it could be memorizing the four chords that make up a majority of pop songs. If you’re trying to become a better cook, it could be mastering three basic techniques that have the widest number of applications–say, for instance, frying, braising, and sautéing. In other words, whichever sub-skills you decide to focus on, make sure they’re the most impactful ones.
By breaking down a goal, task or new skill into bite-sized pieces of learning – kinda like when Roman explains his plan for skydiving cars or when the team breaks down the Fast Five heist inside the most well-hidden warehouse with a race track in Rio – the ideas are more digestible and can be applied fast. Like, really fast.